*i love you* Fudge

Barefoot Love!

*I Cook Barefooted!*

I'm not much of a chocolate fiend.

I wouldn't make a very convincing cookie monster. 
(Though I do like his style!)

And you pro-bab-ly won't see me high-tailin' it 
to catch up with the ice cream man on a hot day.

But wrap some homemade fudge up in a little blanket,

tie a love note to it,

and

address it to me...

and I will follow you around like a fat, sick puppy

because that is what I will be once I'm finished gorging on compliments and candy!

  

Collect.

Compose.

Seal and Deliver.

"I LOVE... 

That you can turn an off handed comment about broccoli 

into a three hour discussion about politics in organized sports."

A dear friend gave *i love you* jars as gifts to all us girls a few years ago for Christmas.

I fell in love with her idea and did the same for my Kentucky family.

After collecting mason jars of all sizes, shapes, and colors,

scouting out the best (and idiot proof) 
homemade fudge recipes I could find,

and hunkering down with pen and paper,

I continued the gift that kept on giving... 

I spread around the LOVE!

*I wonder if she knows just what she's started.*

"I LOVE...

That you get so excited about everything you do.

Nothing half ass for Scarlett."

       ~ A few of my favorites ~

S'more Fudge

 2 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup butter

2/3 cup evaporated milk

1 (7 oz. jar) marshmallow creme

2 cups chocolate chips

1 tsp. vanilla

Butter a small square pan.

In a large pot, combine sugar, butter and evaporated milk.

Bring to a boil over medium heat;

stirring constantly.

Boil 5 minutes and remove from heat.

Add marshmallow creme and chocolate chips.

Blend till smooth.

Stir in vanilla.

Pour into pan and cool to room temperature. 

Score the fudge into small square pieces.

Refrigerate till firm.

Remove fudge from pan and cut rest of way through.

Refrigerate.

"A piece for You. A piece for Me."

Chocolate Mint Fudge

1 (12 oz.) pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk

6 oz. white chocolate

2 tsp. vanilla

1 Tbsp. peppermint extract

Add 1 cup milk to chocolate chips. Melt.

Add vanilla.

Pour half of the mixture into an 8x8 in. wax paper-lined pan.

Let cool for 10 minutes. 

Melt white chocolate with remaining milk.

Add peppermint and green food coloring.

(Mixture will be very thick.)

Spread on first layer.

Cool another 10 minutes.

Top with other half of chocolate mixture.

Cool.

Remove from pan, remove paper. Cut into squares.

Refrigerate.

"A piece for You. A piece for Me."

Maple Nut Fudge

1 cup maple syrup

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup cream

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup walnuts

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Boil sugar, cream, and butter until soft ball stage is reached.

Add nuts and vanilla.

Beat until ready to pour into wax paper-lined pan.

Cool.

Refrigerate.

"A piece for You. A piece for Me." 

***

You want reviews?
How 'bout,
"I Love... This!" ヅ





 How 'bout You?
Have a recipe you want to share on 
*I Cook Barefooted!*?
Show some Barefoot Love and...

Send it here:  scarlettcolleen@yahoo.com 
Want to include a photo? Fun!

What's on your table?

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.

All life is an experiment.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 *Barefoot Love* Airbrush By, Colleen 
2012

*I Cook Barefooted!* ~ White Chocolate Fruit Tart

Barefoot Love!

 Can you feel it?

*Give me an... H*

Kids gettin' restless.

*Give me an... E*

All hopped up on sunshine and daisy chains.

*Give me an... L*

That look in their eyes,

spring in their step,

your money in their back pocket.

Visions of...

summer camp, roller coasters, and swimmin' holes.

*Give me a... P*

*What does that spell?*

SUMMER VACATION!

Yep.

It's right around the corner.

Are YOU ready?
***

The days of hectic class field trips to the zoo, 
followed by picnics in the park
and mom caravans trailing behind school buses 
filled with noisy kids smelling of goat,
have passed for our family.

Our school year's end
is no longer filled with last minute 
homemade Teacher gifts, 
Teacher appreciation snack days
and Teacher hugs.


Once our kids were unleashed 
onto Junior High
children's laughter gaily filtering through the halls
turned a corner somehow, to a raucous 
Game of Thrones;
complete with feuding 'clicks' in the pursuit of power,
tales of frayed loyalties
and general teen-angst carnage.


So, teary-eyed, I find myself this year
bearing no offerings of
White Chocolate Fruit Tarts
for our grade school teachers; 
no glowing faces to greet me in the doorway 
of my child's *other* life; 
no opportunity to simply say, Thank You,
to those people who have helped raise our children.


It's sad leaving their childhood behind. I know.
But standing here now on the other side of that fence...
that cute little play-yard fence...
I can honestly say, watching them as they
learn from their mistakes and grow in their triumphs
 can be just as rewarding now,
in these rascally years
(yep, I said rascally), 
if not more so.



The way I see it,
it's a good thing I shared some Tart Love.

Happy Teachers
make 
Happy Students
make
Happy Parents
make 
Happier Children.


***

Barefoot Love!

☮

White Chocolate Fruit Tart

 

¾ cup butter, softened

½ cup confectioner’s sugar

1 ½  cups flour

1 10 oz. pkg. vanilla baking chips, melted

¼ cup whipping cream

1 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese, softened

1 20 oz. can pineapple chunks, undrained

1 pint fresh strawberries, sliced

1 11 oz. can mandarin oranges, drained

2 kiwi, peeled and sliced

3 Tbsp. sugar

2 tsp. cornstarch

½ tsp. lemon juice

Reserved pineapple juice


***

Cream butter and sugar.

Gradually add flour; mix well.

Press into ungreased 11 inch tart pan or a 12 inch cookie sheet with sides.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or till lightly browned.

Cool. 

Beat chips and whipping cream.,

Add cream cheese and beat till smooth.

Spread over entire crust.

Chill 30 minutes.

Arrange fruit over filling (reserving pineapple juice).

In saucepan, combine sugar, cornstarch, lemon and pineapple juice.

Boil over medium heat for two minutes or till thickened.

Stir constantly.

Cool.

Brush over top of fruit.

Chill 1 hour.

Store in fridge till ready to eat!

You want reviews?
How 'bout...

“And YOU my dear, get an A!”

 

How 'bout You?
Have a recipe you want to share on 
*I Cook Barefooted!*?
Show some Barefoot Love and...
Send it here:  scarlettcolleen@yahoo.com 
Want to include a photo? Fun!


What's on your table?

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.

All life is an experiment.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

 *Barefoot Love*Airbrush By, Colleen 
2012

Just Call Me, Friday.

(Sarah R. Callender, author of “Sherpa”, posed the question “What do you carry?” If you’d like to play along, please visit her blog inside-out underpants to read her latest “confessions of a musing multi-tasker”.)

Sherpa • 1 a member of a Himalayan people living on the borders of Nepal and Tibet, renowned for their skill in mountaineering. 2 a member of that most awesome tribe of kid-wranglers, commonly referred to as Mothers. Hallelujah!

Apparently, Sherpas often answer to the name of the week they were born. And since I can relate, you can just call me, Friday. I like Fridays. I was born on a Friday. This Sherpa migrated from the hills of Kentucky, knobs really. She speaks fluent dog, cat, bunny, rat, horse, chicken and kid-speak, doesn’t own a llama, but is open to the possibilities; and is considered by most to be out of her mind – and likely a close descendent of The Little Old Lady Who Lived In a Shoe; whom she believes to be a Sherpa of the most sensible cautious variety. (Fearful of losing one of her errant charges, she stuck close to home.) 

Regretfully, this Sherpa must disclose, to the relief of her own conscience and Sherpa law, 1 her general distaste of yaks (arrogant cows), 2 freezing temperatures resulting in icicles forming at the end of her nose hairs; and 3, is opposed to any venture, with she as your guide, which would have her “humping” tanks of air to the top of the world. She doesn’t see the point. Childbirth was good enough for her. If given the opportunity, however, she would enjoy seeing the movie. (Bad Sherpa.)

This one, tasked with carrying the wee bits and pieces of her children’s flights of fancy since conception, the equally unrealistic and somewhat sadistic expectation of turning water to wine (or in this case, a non-existent savings plan into a college education for three children), and bearing the weight of the world on her shoulders, which can hardly keep up with her own sick-and-twisted desire to publish something resembling anything, sometimes feels like Sisyphus (as in, Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus), caught up in that same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to watch helplessly, as the damn thing surrenders to Newton’s laws of gravity and motion tumbling back to the bottom, mocking her very existence. The gods truly must be crazy!

With what, you ask, do I prepare myself and my charges to tackle this world and all its uncertainty? Well, of those things large and small, valuable and insignificant, which were stuffed into my pockets by wee little fingers, or unceremoniously shoved by the Sherpa, deep into the recesses of whatever bag Sherpa slung over her shoulder, I must admit I needed and loved all of them.

The ballerina ripped rescued from her post.

The pennies – all heads up.

The pink and green and orange drink umbrellas rocket blasters.

The snowflakes that never made it home in fuzzy mittens.

The child’s “tickle feet 10¢” coupon, delivered on Sherpa’s birthday.

The locks of hair cut by child, hidden in pajamas by child.

The little gray seashell that looked just like The Big Comfy Couch.

And the multitude of hungry-wet-sleepy baby, precocious-walking-talking toddler, obnoxious-ants-in-their-pants-tween and the knows-everything-teenager STUFF that They, and We, depend on to organize our sanity!    

What do I carry? It’s simple really. I carry the struggle itself. Like Sisyphus and his rock, I am content with the load, because it is absurd and because they look into my very soul with those eyes, which mirror my own. 

“I must imagine (this Sherpa) is happy.”

The Soap Jar

My grandmother was an artist. I don’t know that I understood this fully, until I recalled an encounter with the soap jar. We think we know a person, a loved one passed on, through the words they’ve spoken or the love they’ve shared. But what of the Life only they’ve experienced, as the unique individuals that they were?  There’s more to me, I can tell you, than that mass of dirty laundry staring at me from across the hall, which unfortunately I am in charge of, and that I will no doubt leave behind without a second glance when my time here has expired. A Life is truly in the details. It is in the malleable mosaic of living, and in the very existence of Self. We are complex creatures, difficult to figure out really.  However, when we are still, when we are quiet, the minutia of Self are revealed – in a word, a smile, or even in an old jar sitting beneath a window’s ledge, smelling of an Irish Spring and soap.      

Though certainly skilled in her more mundane, household duties – my grandmother could snap a bean and hang a bed sheet out to dry with style and speed – it is a treat for those of us who love her, each and every time, we happen across those memories we know to be, authentically Helen. In a sagging cardboard box overflowing with well-used sewing patterns smelling of old newsprint and attic, or occasionally in the impossibly small-and-perfect embroidery she once created, or even in an old pencil sketch of song birds perched atop a “Good Evening”, our family still marvels at her brilliance and her flair for thoughtful ingenuity in the simplest of things.

My grandmother’s most impressive talents, however, lay hidden in her knack for collecting and repurposing just about anything. Snug drawers, littered shelves, and nooks-and-crannies neatly housed rusty old nails pulled from splintered old barn wood, bits of fabric (so meager in size, that Hunca Munca herself would turn up her nose), stamps and greeting cards and pressed paper napkins – pencil stubs, colored glass and all things pink-and-pretty. In each of these things, these “…wagon wheel, Roy Rogers, garagesale…” things, we are given a glimpse into this simply-complex mosaic that was her Life.

~

So, who saves nasty old soap in a jar, I asked myself years ago, wavering then between my good sense and snobbery.  I stepped into her kitchen to ask her the same, where she stood rifling through a drawer in the sideboard. 

“Scarlett, bring those young eyes of yours over here and see if you can’t find a rubber band in that drawer.”  She straightened no more than three square cards with matching envelopes, which she held in her hand. “I want you to put these in your suitcase and take them home to Missouri when you leave.”

I closed my mouth, and quickly handed her a large silver paper clip resting on top of a pile of pens, some sort of glue or grease in a crimped tube, and a small flashlight.

She resumed her search, “Let’s find a rubber band to put around them, so they stay nice.”

Her eyes looked at me then, to the jar I still held in my hand, and then back to the task ahead of her. “Go get a small paper bag off the back porch, behind the tool box, and we’ll scrape some of that soap into it for your family.” 

‘Seriously,’ I laughed inside – so hard, it was difficult to keep my nostrils from flaring and tears escaping.  I could just see the look on my husband’s face as I handed him a clean towel, and the jar, before his morning shower.

“For what purpose,” I muttered under my breath, disbelieving. It became blaringly obvious; there was only one thing to do. Put it back where you found it, Scarlett, and nobody gets hurt.   

It was too late for that. She had heard my protestations. “You have the energy and the know-how – why don’t you take it home for me and see what pretty little soaps you can make out of it, and give them as gifts this Christmas.”

“Thanks, Grandma,” I answered over my shoulder, “but I don’t think we need any more soap right now.” I quickly replaced the quart canning jar beneath the windowsill and turned to see her grinning at me from the door. (She was much faster than she looked.)

“Now, that’s perfectly good soap,” she assured me, deftly stretching the thin, elastic band she’d found in another drawer, over a sleeping fawn painted in sepia tones. “That’s the trouble with this world today. People just toss things out when there’s plenty of good use to be had in them.”

We stood there a moment or two, before she gave in, gazing at the soap jar beneath the window.  I suppose, if I had looked closely enough then, I might have noticed how daylight played on the splashy hues of pink pastels, and variegated greens, and how the warm Kentucky sun danced along the creamy slivers of white behind the glass. Had I given it time to see it as anything other than used up bits, perhaps in the perfumed scent of a rose or the clean scent of a manly Irish Spring, I might have seen the beauty in such a thing, possibly even shared her vision – if I were quiet enough, still enough.   

I know now, the eagerness and the love behind the grin; that we all might see the wonder and the beauty and the artistry she left behind, in a perfectly good mosaic. 

 

Oh, Boy!

I once heard my son, our first born, emit a deep throaty noise (maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh) as he posed for a Father’s Day photo shoot – wielding his dad’s chainsaw, his dad’s blow torch, his dad’s chair, his dad’s truck and even his dad’s Beloved Ibanez, and live to tell about it.

This is his Dad's chainsaw.

This is his Dad's blowtorch.

This is his Dad's chair.

This is his Dad's truck. (Yes, licking it)

This is his Dad's Beloved Ibanez...

... Up Close and Personal.

 

 

THIS is his DAD.

 

 

 

A chuckle,

A growl,

A sigh,

A “sweeeeeet!”

I’ve seen and heard it all.

This Thanksgiving I, a boy’s mother, witnessed the joy of ownership…

...in a giggle.

Oh, Boy!

The Mothers Circle Show

“Another year has come and gone and the drums still haven’t made the cut.  They sit quietly in the dark basement clinging to their hopes that one day they too will make it to The Mothers’ Circle Show.  Well, There’s always next year!”

"Scarlett's Kitchen" ~ Sketch by Rick Stokes

A dear friend asked me the other day, from across a kitchen table, “Do you miss it?” 

Feigning indifference, I replied, “Nope”, and then downed my drink.

“I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: 

What the hell good would that do?” ~ Ronnie Shakes

I realized only today, as I went about the business of laundry and cleaning house, with “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” blaring from the stereo and a blustery November day tapping on my windows, that the answer I gave was not completely honest.  Was hot glue really all that held us together, she must have wondered.  I caught the hurt smoldering there in her eyes, much like that of a mama bear just before she nips her cub in the butt for misbehaving.  (Ouch.  Okay, I give.  I miss it.  Hmph.)

“Help! I’m being held prisoner by my heredity and environment.” ~ Dennis Allen

I am wallowing in my first taste of freedom, my first non-obligatory nod to the season, as the holidays are fast approaching this year.  It is the first time in a long, long time that I find myself, so wishing my dear friends and I had tiny gingerbread men to undress and tease with our paintbrushes.  After all, we did spend many long days and even longer nights with the little guys.  I hardly know what to do with myself when I see them lying in those tight little boxes on the grocery shelf today, just imagining myself tearing away those little gum drop buttons. 

“I can believe anything provided it is incredible.” ~ Oscar Wilde

I’m sorry.  What was the question?  Oh, right.  “Do you miss it”, she wanted to know, trying not to reveal what is on all of our minds and lurking in our very muscle memory this time of year.  We, the loyal, the dedicated and the sleep deprived have joined the rest of the human race.  Well then, how could I not miss The Show?

“Fly Your Freak Flag!”

‘How will you raise those little monsters of yours to be generous and true’, I asked myself all those years ago, ‘if you cannot lead by example?’  Dr. Maya Angelou said it best I think, “Sister, when you get, give. When you learn, teach.”  I found the answer I was looking for then in a small, but fierce army of volunteers.  I still remember the day I hunted two of them down in my kids’ elementary school parking lot.  New to the neighborhood, I had decided I would just have to pull up my big girl panties and make the first move, since my phone wasn’t ringing off the hook with a personal invitation. 

And it has made all the difference. 

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”

~ Mark Twain

Together we sewed, painted, glued and glittered some 25,000 Christmas ornaments, January to December; summers off, if we were so lucky.  As fundraisers go, honestly, we were lucky to scrape the surface of the tens of thousands of dollars our school PTO brought in each and every year, but then it’s not all about money, is it.

“Never keep up with the Joneses.  Drag them down to your level.  It’s cheaper.”

~ Quentin Crisp

The Mothers’ Circle Ornament Sale is more than a thirty-some year tradition in our small rural community.  It is and always has been a symbol of what sets our school apart from the rest.  It’s Family.  Hundreds of kids and their families grow excited every year at this time, in anticipation of the unveiling in their school’s library window.  Their lists are checked, their pocket change counted and their holiday gifts are theirs to give.  All handmade, mostly recycled Nutcracker Dancers are lined up carefully in their plastic boxes and dragged up from the school basement; hauled out of our cars and kitchens and closets alongside Jolly Lollies, Joyous Angels, Fros-Tee Snowmen, and Spoon Santas, Icy Skates, Peek-A-Boo Penguins and Pajammy Lammys.

“Christmas gift suggestions:

To your enemy, forgiveness. 

To an opponent, tolerance. 

To a friend, your heart. 

To a customer, service. 

To all, charity. 

To every child, a good example. 

To yourself, respect.” ~ Oren Arnold

For nine years, I trudged along with the lot of them, calling in favors and begging for assistance from our kids and husbands, aunts and grandmas, friends and neighbors.  You knew us by the sparkle and smattering of glitter on our cheeks, in our hair, and if you asked, even in our unders.  Somehow we managed to pull it off every year, despite an occasional loss of time and perhaps a few missing clumps of hair.  Nothing a good helping of Kate’s ‘Fireside Coffee’ or Robin’s ‘Pine on a Twine Chicken Tortilla Soup with Lime’ or Michele’s ‘X-Treme Polar Bear Pumpkin Butter’ or Pam’s ‘St. Nick Stick Taco Soup’ or even Lucinda’s ‘Santa Stops Here Sweet Potato Pie’ couldn’t cure.  

“When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, 
and stick together.” ~Robert Fulgum

This year is a first for me and for them.  My youngest started Junior High this fall.  He was one of the last to go in our small group.  As he left those halls of our beloved elementary school and moved on, so must I.  So must we all.  Yes, I miss it terribly my dear friends, as I miss my little pink babies, my young children's wonder, indeed my journey through their childhood.  But the Mothers' Circle bond was made, and yes, lifelong friendships forged at the nasty end of a glue gun, the moment I laid eyes on that small group of women huddled together in someone’s kitchen, hands and eyes busy with their craft, mouths arguing over a shade of red, smiles and laughter in their hearts.          

“Joy to The World!”

Mother Love

Mother Heart! Who knew the struggle

in those years that stood the test.

Mother Heart! I’d like to snuggle

once again close to your breast.

For the world with Fame’s great story,

all its triumphs, all its gold;

could not rob me of the glory

of the Mother Love I hold.

~ P. W. Reynolds

My Mother and Me

When I became a mother for the first time – I knew. He was mine and I was his, no matter what. Our daughter was born two and half years later and our youngest son, a few years after that – and still, I knew. The bond had been made. There was no denying it. 

What I didn’t know then was how that bond I held with my children would draw me closer to my own mother. The mother I spent the first quarter of my life adoring and the second – well, that’s what teenagers do, right? 

I, like most every girl of thirteen, once entertained the fantasy, that I must have been taken from my “real” parents – loving, caring people with no children other than myself, most likely stolen from them in the dead of night. They would be gracious people, probably with a lot of money, who now had holes in their hearts where mine should have been lovingly adored. The realization dawned on me then, as I searched the family photo albums and rummaged through the cedar chest for proof that I was, in fact, heir to the throne of… well, the throne of something I was sure. 

These fantasies would not last, however, for it was in that moment when I lay eyes on a photograph of me, as an infant, lying in my mother’s arms – that I knew I was hers. It only took the next twenty or thirty years for me to understand exactly what that meant.

This was the mother who made me comb my hair and brush my teeth before stepping foot out of the house. I heard more than once, “Sugar isn’t for breakfast" and "Those beautiful eyes weren’t meant to be hidden away by your hair". She taught me always to say, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and told me to hold my shoulders up and be proud of where I come from. “If you believe you’re somebody, then others will believe it too.” This mother encouraged, begged and insisted that I do my homework, clean my room and eat my vegetables. Where was the justice in that, I cried.

All mothers have expectations, I suppose, which most of us spend a lifetime trying to live up to – especially as daughters. Now that I am older I can honestly say, Thank Heaven they do! If it were not for my mother’s expectations, I might never have known what it means to dream, to try and even to fail. Her vision of her children’s limitless potential was what first set me on the path, to settle for nothing less than my best. 

Mother’s Day passed some months back now. It was my seventeenth this year– my mother’s forty-third, and after all this time, I still struggled with what to give as a gift on that special day. How do I thank the one person who gave me life, and then raised me to be who I am today? A box of chocolates are always appreciated.  When are they not?  Chocolate covered cherries are her favorite.  Perhaps some flowers or a nice set of wind chimes. When I was two, five and ten, my hand print on a paper bag would have made her smile. That, after all, was what I was after. The days of my cooing and acting cute have long since passed, though that Mother love and approval is still the golden ticket, even if I have children of my own seeking the same thing.  

What is it that we mothers really want from our children? Do we actually look forward to the perfect store bought gift on those special occasions? You know, the ones that are all about us!  Do we prefer they be wrapped in pretty paper and ribbons or handed over in the store’s plastic bag? From one mother to the rest, I admit, I prefer pretty paper. But what is it, I ask, that really leaves us feeling loved and appreciated?  This year I came to the same conclusion that I have since I was first able to give my mother something other than my hand print on that paper bag – all she really wants is my time and my attention. And, something simple wrapped in pretty paper couldn’t hurt. Words do mean something and when those of Love and Appreciation are followed up with action, they can mean even more.

This week in November, my mother has a birthday.  Happy Birthday, Mom!  I will wrap my arms around her, kiss her on the cheek ~ and while I'm at it, I will tell her that I love her and that she will always be mine... as *I* am hers.  

When her own happiness waned, she stayed. Where her own dreams faltered, she stood fast. I thank her, not simply because she taught me better, but because I am truly grateful for her unfailing dedication and for her love. What better gift to give and receive than words of Love from your children.

With all my love, Dear Mother!